Comment: John Rentoul Attacks Chakrabarti's 'Shameless' Endorsement of Surveillance

Regular Independent columnist John Rentoul blogs about Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti’s appearance on last night’s Newsnight programme. He writes under the headline ‘Shameless: I Want a Surveillance Society’ - he likes to call her ‘Shameless Chakrabarti’ you see, which I presume is an attempt to imply she’s a hypocrite: ‘Oh so now you’re in favour of surveillance’ this line goes – ‘I thought you civil liberties people were against it’. This is already puzzling, as Liberty have consistently defended the principle that the security services ought to be able to use targeted surveillance against people about whom there is specific evidence to imply involvement in serious crime, though they campaign vigorously against arbitrary and unjustified use of surveillance. Rentoul’s attack focuses on her continued criticism of control orders:

What would she do instead of control orders, she was asked by Alex Carlile, the Liberal Democrat peer and independent reviewer of anti-terrorist law. After trying to hide behind trying them in court - what if there is not enough evidence for a conviction yet enough to warrant concern? - and the use of intercept evidence - not relevant in this case - she was eventually embarrassed into mumbling an answer: "Put them under surveillance."

Presumably she wants more CCTV, especially around the homes of terrorist suspects, and monitoring of their telephones and internet use.

Surveillance would either be prohibitively expensive, or intensely intrusive (thereby reinventing control orders in another form), or ineffective. Several suspects subject to control orders have already legged it to who knows where; any weakening of the controls would make it easier for them to abscond.

Given how small the numbers of people are who have been put under control orders (about 12 as of February this year) I think his argument about cost is of marginal importance, even if his assessment of the relative expense is accurate.

It also seems highly disputable that even intrusive surveillance would ‘reinvent’ control orders in another form – control orders primarily involve restrictions on people’s freedom, by imposing restrictions on who suspects can and can’t associate with, or imposing curfews and various degrees of house arrest, rather than intrusions into their privacy (though certainly the practice of 'tagging' is invasive). Now you could maybe argue that the additional invasions of privacy would always be worse than the restrictions of freedom. That would be a interesting position to take, and might even be coherent (though I suspect most would find it unpersuasive). But Rentoul’s not coming out and saying that. Instead he seems to want to have it both ways: control orders aren’t effective enough as they are, anything weaker will let the bad guys get away, but using surveillance beyond what is in place now will be just as bad. He’s painting Liberty as an organisation that is indifferent to the needs of effective policing and intelligence gathering. On the contrary their criticism of the use of control orders specifically takes aim at the claims of efficacy - take their earlier response to Lord Carlile’s previous announcement that there was no alternative to the control order regime or for that matter Shami Chakrabarti's piece in today's Times:

These orders were dreamt up by officials in 2005 and allow terror suspects to be placed under house arrest for ever without any semblance of criminal charge or trial. Apart from being profoundly unfair and un-British (the term “control order” comes from apartheid South Africa), this scheme is profoundly unsafe. A number of its targets have disappeared, and one former “controlee” had a habit of turning up, complete with plastic tag, at large public meetings attended by members of the present and past Cabinets.

And, as I said, they've consistently defended the use of targetted surveillance when the evidence supports it:

We take no issue with the use of intrusive surveillance powers per se. While intrusive surveillance will always engage Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA)1 (right to privacy) such intrusion can be justified if it falls within the legitimate purposes set out under Article 8 (e.g. if done to prevent crime and threats to national security) and if it can be shown to be necessary and proportionate in all the circumstances.

What's shameless about that?

News: Internet Browsers' Record of Your Web Habits Available to Other Websites

From the Sydney Morning Herald: The Electronic Freedom Foundation have been researching how easy it is to access information about a user’s internet activity. Commonly it is thought that disabling ‘cookies’ is enough to prevent one’s web browser collecting information on what websites are being visited. The EFF’s research implies that even with this safeguard the browser leaves ‘a virtual fingerprint’ which nearly uniquely identifies the user and enables websites to access information on the users browsing habits:

To conduct the research, the website anonymously logged information that most websites would normally access when users visit, the EFF said.

After comparing a database collected from almost a million visitors, the EFF discovered that 84 per cent of the configuration combinations were unique and identifiable, and where browsers had Adobe Flash or Java plug-ins installed they were 94 per cent identifiable.

"Browser fingerprinting is a powerful technique, and fingerprints must be considered alongside cookies and IP addresses when we discuss web privacy and user trackability,"

Israeli Security Expert Decries Body Scanners Before Canadian Parliament

The Vancouver Sun has reported that an Israeli security expert who assisted in the design of the security system at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport suggested in parliamentary hearings that the deployment of body scanners is a “useless” waste of money.

“I don't know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,” he is quoted as saying, “That's why we haven't put them in our airport.”

According to the story, a Canadian transport minister has defended the installation of body scanners at Canadian airports. Political scientist Mark Salter also reportedly testified that he viewed body scanners as a “genuine leap forward” in airline security. (Hat tip to unwatched.org)

Study: Privacy Not Dead to the Younger Generation

From Yahoo News: A new study coming out of Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania suggests young people do not care significantly less about privacy than the older generation. Amongst the findings:

• Eighty-eight percent of people of all ages said they have refused to give out information to a business because they thought it was too personal or unnecessary. Among young adults, 82 percent have refused, compared with 85 percent of those over 65.

• Most people — 86 percent — believe that anyone who posts a photo or video of them on the Internet should get their permission first, even if that photo was taken in public. Among young adults 18 to 24, 84 percent agreed — not far from the 90 percent among those 45 to 54.

• Forty percent of adults ages 18 to 24 believe executives should face jail time if their company uses someone's personal information illegally — the same as the response among those 35 to 44 years old.

The sample is big: about 1,000 people, though smaller than the 27,000 the Eurobarometer surveys use (which also record some interesting results on attitudes to privacy). It's interesting to see empirical research on an issue people are all too often happy to accept quite crude generalisations as obvious truths.

I'd also be interested to see work on whether there has been a change in people's attitudes over the last 5-10 years. I have a hunch many young people who didn't care about privacy when they first started using the Internet and social networking sites have become far more conscious of privacy issues as they have become more prominent topics of controversy online and in the wider media.

Data Mining on Facebook?

The Guardian has run a story on Facebook against the backdrop of the Ceop “panic button” proposal which reveals that the social networking site conducts algorithm-driven monitoring that “track[s] the behaviour of its users and flag[s] up suspicious activity.” OK, that sounds like data mining, but why is this story of relevance to counter-terrorism? Interestingly, the article states that "Facebook's international law enforcement is lead by Max Kelly, a former FBI agent who worked on cyber-crime and counter-terrorism before moving to Facebook five years ago." The article also discusses how Facebook interacts with law enforcement in the US and UK. It suggests that UK officials still feel Facebook doesn’t do enough to assist them and the UK public to protect the safety of children.